Battlefield 3 team strategy is complex. There’s literally thousands of choices to be made in any given round. Some good, many bad. If you aren’t familiar with BF3 it’s easy to make mistakes and get the team into bad situations. I’m going to write this with teams/clans in mind. I’m sure casual players will also be able to apply some of this.

Battlefield 3 Team Strategy – Maps
Map knowledge is a massive part of BF3 strategy. If you haven’t poked around the map on an empty server you have no business scrimming or matching. It’s not enough to just know where flags and bombsites are. Most fighting wont even take place on the objective.

You’re going to end up fighting before you get it, and after you get it. Most objectives are weak to certain areas. For example lets look at Seine Crossing conquest small.

The most important flag on this map is C. This is because from C you have an easy route to hit every other flag. The capture radius for C is a huge area down on the ground level. Yet holding C flag has nothing to do with the ground level and every thing to do with the C building.

From C building you have a perfect vantage point and a safe place to spawn in squad mates. If you lose C building you will lose C flag even though it’s not in radius.

These are the kind of things you need to think about to be a successful Battlefield 3 team. There are 100s of more objectives like this that I can’t fit into one guide. I hope this example helps you attack/defend your objectives properly.

Battlefield 3 Team Strategy – Communication
Communication is the single biggest factor in any team game. Bad communication will cost you matches. With no voice communication it’s impossible to beat a good team. Once you have a means of voice communication there’s two topics that must be communicated.

Enemy Positions
I can’t even put into words how important this is. Ever seen a frag video on YouTube where some superstar player wipes a whole team? Many of those are set up by team mates with good communication. Every time you die you need to communicate that you’re down and either tell them where the guy is or give a good guess. Don’t whine or complain when you die, communicate the enemy dudes position.

Set Modifications
The enemy positions have been called out. Now what? Respond! Every team needs a loud in-game leader to call modifications. Once you have a decent chunk of information about enemy positions you need to move your team into a good counter spot. If they are pushing all left you don’t want your guys half guarding right and half left. When two good teams play this action will go back and forth until one team breaks. It becomes this complex game of enemy positions spotted, set modifications, they see your position then set their modification, and so on.

Other Talky Stuff
Keeping your team motivated is another useful communication tool. It’s easy for a team to get discouraged when they are down in points and in a bad spot, especially on conquest. You can’t just sit there in the bleed and defend the last flag. Rally your bros and get some sort of attack going. Every attack has a chance at succeeding. It may not be big but it beats getting a guaranteed loss from not pushing at all.

Battlefield 3 Team Strategy – Strats
Strats refer to the opening strategy of a battlefield match. Games like CoD and CS are almost nothing but strats. Those are round based games where you will see a predictable opening game 7-15 times in a match. In Battlefield you only get 2 rounds so you only see 2 openings. After the initial push you have 200+ tickets to play with. Having a good strat is important. However if you mess up or just have a bad strat it’s possible to recover.

The biggest mistake I see is teams having a decent or even very good opening strat then having nothing to back it up once mid game rolls around. What should you do when nothing is predictable and the enemy team can set up anywhere? The answer is to figure out what areas are highly contested or important for taking objectives. These are areas when an enemy must go to move forward so figure out those spots and practice them with your team.

It’s hard to give people set rolls in a battlefield game. The match can change some much in 1 minute. Sometimes it’s good to go engineer and deal with a tank. The next minute you need an assault kit to clear out a flag. The best thing you can do is make sure your team understands what needs to be guarded and what needs to be attacked. Then let them judge what would be best to deal with a specific situation.

I’ve seen good teams go in there and play matches completely by ear. To do that you need a team with lots of Battlefield experience and individual skill. If you don’t have that you need to organize a good opening strat and sub strats for dealing with choke points. Spending time with your team looking at map will pay off come match day.

Average players can come together with good teamwork and communication to make a dangerous competitive team. Most top Battlefield teams aren’t filled with superstars that can slay your whole team on a whim. In Battlefield teamwork trumps skill. A group of average skilled players can come together and become a top 10 BF team if they get communication and teamwork down. It’s a matter of putting time into the maps and not getting discouraged if you lose and lose bad, it will happen. Learn from your mistakes and you will climb the competitive ladder.